Fresh start to college football season

Everybody make bail? Everybody finish those depositions? Nobody has an arraignment scheduled on game day, right?

Good enough. With all those trifles out of the way, we're hellbent for the start of another college football season. For cops, prosecutors and judges, it probably can't start fast enough.

Maybe it's just us, but the past offseason has been fraught with an unusual amount of rogue behavior, things like Washington State's Andy Mattingly clubbing a junior-college soccer player over the head with a frying pan. You know it's bad when the volume of charging papers exceeds letters of intent.

Coaches at several high-profile schools were called to account for the sheer volume of players acting up: Alabama, Georgia, Louisville, Iowa and Penn State, notably. Georgia, ranked No. 1 in the first AP and coaches polls, will have five players suspended for its opener for a variety of bad moves.

Never underestimate the resourcefulness of college athletes in finding new ways to twit the local cops:

Georgia will be without linebacker Darius Dewberry, suspended for two games. Seems Dewberry went to a hospital to check up on a couple of teammates involved in a recent bar fight. When he was stopped by a control arm at a parking lot, he smashed it — with his hands — and also shattered four pots.

Torri Williams of Purdue got busted for stealing condoms from a discount store. Oh, he's a safety.

Kentucky coach Rich Brooks recently kicked off quarterback Curtis Pulley for a variety of issues. That elevates Will Fidler to No. 2 — presuming he clears up his own disorderly-conduct charge from an incident outside a Lexington restaurant.

Jamar Hornsby of Florida got himself booted — for alleged, repeated use of a credit card that used to belong to a dead woman. She was killed in a motorcycle accident that also took the life of one of Hornsby's Gators teammates last October.

A few years ago, when Tennessee punter signee Britton Colquitt jeopardized his scholarship with a string of alcohol-related incidents, he talked about realizing the error of his ways and finding God. Tell that to the tree stump and parked car he hit in February while driving drunk, an offense that will cost him the Vols' first five games.

Josh Jarboe took his case to the Internet. Jarboe, an Oklahoma signee who had already pleaded guilty to bringing a gun to school and carrying it without a license, appeared on a video in a profanity-laced jag about guns and shooting people. Oklahoma decided it could probably find other wide receivers who don't pack heat and dismissed him.

Police chased an Iowa incoming freshman, Riley Reiff, from an alley after they said he was partly clothed and acting strangely. After a 20-minute foot pursuit, they ran him down in a Pita Pit restaurant. Before Reiff could even order the gyro special, they arrested him on public-intoxication charges.

And you thought the game was pretty wild on the field.

What can they do for a sequel?

Can the 2008 season possibly be as madcap as '07? Doubtful.

To recap: Last year had the biggest point-spread upset in history (Stanford, as a 41-point underdog to USC), plus Appalachian State's opening-day mind-bender at Michigan.

Five teams lost when they were No. 2 in the nation. Notre Dame, as part of the Charlie Weis Slapstick Series, lost to Navy for the first time since 1963. Kansas and Missouri suddenly decided to field teams.

Time was, a late-season loss was fatal to a team's national-title chances. But Ohio State lost on Nov. 10 (to Illinois) and LSU fell on Nov. 23 (to Arkansas), yet both reached the BCS championship.

Tough act to follow.

Seven good story lines

1. The spread-option offense continues to be all the rage. Says Arizona coach Mike Stoops: "It puts a lot of pressure on your defense. It doesn't give you time to decipher down, distance and formation. All the things you use for advantages get taken away when people are constantly attacking you."

2. Can somebody — Illinois, Michigan, Congress maybe — keep Ohio State out of the national-title game? The Buckeyes are 0-9 against the SEC in bowl games.

3. Is there a BCS-buster in the house, following the lead of Utah (2004), Boise State (2006) and Hawaii (2007)? Best bets are BYU and Fresno State, but the Bulldogs have a thorny schedule.

4. Between afternoon naps, Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden try to outshuffle each other to the finish line. Bowden has 373 career victories, Paterno 372. But JoePa leads in longevity; he'll be 82 in December. Bowden turns 79 on Nov. 8, the day the Seminoles play son Tommy's Clemson team.

5. Tim Tebow of Florida returns to defend his Heisman Trophy.

6. Some coordinator coaching moves that could tilt the landscape: Offensive guru Norm Chow to UCLA; spread tactician Tony Franklin from Troy to Auburn (where Al Borges, ex-Oregon and UCLA assistant, was bounced); Will Muschamp, who devised primo defenses at LSU and Auburn, to Texas; and Michigan's Ron English, to head the defense at Louisville. English was (a) a strong West Coast recruiter who had O'Dea's Taylor Mays highly interested in the Wolverines before he picked USC; and (b) a candidate of interest for Washington's defensive coordinator opening last winter.

7. Concluding that nothing goes together like mistletoe and the Motor City Bowl, the NCAA authorized another two postseason games. The Congressional Bowl and St. Petersburg Bowl will be the hit of your holiday party Dec. 20, bringing to 34 the number of bowls.

Time for a change

A couple of new rules are in place, primarily governing timing. Let's hope they're more effective than the ill-fated clock changes of 2006, rescinded last year.

Colleges will now use a 40-second play clock, similar to that of the NFL, which will start at the end of each play. Before, the 25-second clock began when officials marked the ball ready for play.

Also, except for the last two minutes of a half, after a player runs out of bounds and officials mark the ball ready for play, the clock starts — rather than at the snap.

Mike Bellotti, Oregon coach who is rules committee chairman, says TV has continued to pressure administrators about the length of games.

So, in the wake of the college game's most breathtaking season, they made changes. You know: If it ain't broke, by all means, fix it.

Hot-seated coaches

1. Tyrone Willingham, Washington. He was seen the other night at Target, purchasing a three-pack of flame-retardant boxers. They were beige, of course.

2. Mike Stoops, Arizona. He better get the 'Cats to a bowl game. Unlike Willingham, he has the schedule to do it.

3. Greg Robinson, Syracuse. In three seasons, Robinson has two more Big East wins than you have.

4. Mike Sanford, UNLV. With a 6-29 record, how relevant do you suppose Sanford is in Vegas?

5. Charlie Weis, Notre Dame. His contract extends until about the 23rd century, but the subway alums might not stand for a season like last year's.

6. Kirk Ferentz, Iowa. A consensus good coach, Ferentz won 31 games from 2002-04. He's 19-18 in his last three, with a boatload of off-field problems.

7. Steve Spurrier, South Carolina. What, the ol' ball coach? Maybe it's not yet nervous time for him, but he's 21-16 in three years, not a lot different from the Lou Holtz days, and enters '08 with a five-game losing streak.

The Mayflower Man

College football has Paterno, who began as a head coach at Penn State in 1966 — before the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., before man set foot on the moon, before Kent State.

And it also has Phil Elmassian, an itinerant assistant coach at Louisiana-Monroe who energized Jim Lambright's 1995 Washington staff. He's evidence that behind the scenes of your frivolous Saturdays, there are sometimes a lot of forwarding addresses.

In order, the 17 stickers on Elmassian's suitcase: William and Mary, Richmond, Ferrum, East Carolina, Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Syracuse, Washington, Boston College, Wisconsin, LSU, West Virginia, Marshall, Purdue, Nebraska and Louisiana-Monroe.

Elmassian is only 56, a pup by Paterno standards, so he could still reel in a lot more unclaimed zip codes.

First score of '08

Michael Eynon, a senior guard at Ohio University, recently dropped into a local discount store, bought a lottery ticket and matched five of six numbers in the multistate MegaMillions drawing. That's good for $250,000, or about $172,000 after taxes. Eynon said he plans to donate to his church and his family and invest the rest.

The odds on his haul were slightly better than one in four million, or about the same as this proposition: The NCAA hasn't been able to find anything wrong with Eynon's big hit.